This pivotal Bond Movie Moment is an extraordinary melange of pithy zingers, psychological complexity, and baffling non-sequiturs, during which Craig’s blunt tool of an assassin took human form. However, if we want to be a bit more exact about it, it was one specific scene that marked the fork-in-the-road where the Bond movies evolved from one thing into something quite different: the train journey to Montenegro when he first meets Vesper Lynd ( Eva Green). Fortunately for Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, they had finally got their hands on the one Ian Fleming novel that had eluded them since the Bond rights went their way: the all-important first book, Casino Royale.ĭirector Martin Campbell’s 2006 film version completely re-energised the Bond franchise (as his own GoldenEye had done in 1995), and sent the series off in a bold new direction. Pierce Brosnan’s final Bond outing in 2002, Die Another Day with its video-game CGI and invisible Aston Martin was an empty, heartless spectacle by comparison. The newly arrived Bond films had at their centre a conflicted, tortured interesting hero whose actions had brutal, real world consequences.

The sixth incarnation of 007 took his bow in November 2006, following months of ungenerous and spectacularly wide-of-the-mark criticism of this new ‘James Blonde.’ With their previous movie having reached an apex of silliness not seen since Moonraker, the Bond producers realised that they needed to reboot their franchise along earthier, grittier lines (much as they had done in 1981 after 007’s much-mocked journey into space, with the determinedly down-to-earth For Your Eyes Only).

Casino royale train scene